Esperanto/Lesson 9

We have seen in lesson 4 that new words can be derived by changing the ending of a word and that words can be put together in a compound word. In lesson 6 we have seen that compounds can also be created by tacking on a preposition to a word. Here we will learn yet another way of deriving new words.

Words can also be derived by tacking on a part-of-speech ending or even a suffix to an entire phrase, usually to construction like "en la domo" or "sur la tablo". This is, however, not limited to those: Occasionally entire sentences are even used, such as "Kiel vi fartas?". When this is done, any article in the phrase is normally dropped. Usually, the part-of-speech endings are dropped from words in the middle of the phrase, unless this sounds awkward or would be unclear. The endings of ordinal numbers and possessive pronouns are never dropped. Examples are: